So every once in a while, someone writes in (using my contact form) and asks a question about a guest on The Daily Show and their book. A lot of times I know the answer, occasionally I just have a pretty good guess about the answer. I've answered about 1/2 dozen or so now and I thought other people might have the same question. So I thought I'd share the questions and the response I sent. I'll be filing these all under "From the Mailbag".

Here's the first one I thought I'd share ...

Hello. Please refresh my memory re. a book/guest-author from 2011 and earlier,Subject: decision-making by humans/ making up one's mind emotionally, then justifying/rationalizing it later by the "reasons" we cite...after the fact.Applies to buying a car and/or voting for a candidate for office.Thank you so much!

Gary D.

This is what I responded to Gary (long answer):

Hi, Gary ..

Thanks for your note.

Is it possible the author you were thinking of was on The Colbert Report instead of The Daily Show? Based on your description, the two that sprang to mind were Michael Shermer’s The Believing Brain or David Eagleman’s Incognito.

The one book from The Daily Show that it could be is Michael Specter’s Denialism - though that was back in 2009.

It really sounds like the Shermer book. He is very interesting and, if not him, certainly writes and talks about the things you mentioned. He writes for Scientific American; this is his site. He also gave a TED talk on this very topic in 2010 (note – the video starts playing when you load the page (annoying) so make sure your speakers aren’t on too loud :))

Important! I am not affiliated with The Daily Show in any way. I am just a fan who loves to read and gets a lot of great "to read" ideas from the guests on the show. Also, the book and movie links generally go to Amazon where you can purchase the book. These are affiliate links and if you buy the book, I do get a small commission.